Posted on 11/03/2005 2:24:08 PM PST by inquest
There's a new poll up on the side. Do you think the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution authorizes federal laws against narcotics and firearms? Now lest everyone forget, this isn't asking whether you personally agree with such laws. It's about whether your honest reading of the Constitution can justify them.
While you're thinking it over, it might help to reflect on what James Madison had to say about federal power over interstate commerce:
Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it. Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.I'll be looking forward to your comments.
The many federal and state drug prohibitions are based on experience and were adopted and have been maintained through democratic processes. Most voters do not want to be around chronic drug users and regard them, correctly, as noxious, costly, and often dangerous.
Citizens in countries where private ownership of arms was prohibited thought gun prohibition was a good thing. A dumbed down public that has been propagandized is easily manipulated to seemingly desire an end result that is detrimental to the individual and society as a whole.
Radical libertarianism appalls me precisely because it is radical.
Libertarians doesn't prescribe to fully integrated honesty. I do. Radical? History has nothing to offer as an example of what's about to come.
I'm abandoning spending time on replying to you. You're not worth the effort. Anyone that cares to learn, I've written enough for them. No need to repeat myself.
LOL. Neo-Tech mojo running a bit low today, eh? Time for a recharge of the ol' Zonpower?
Individual experience and that of a single society are inferior to a broader view. Every time that I have read Madison's Notes on the Constitutional Convention, I am impressed by the delegates' wide and sophisticated knowledge of human history, which contributed greatly to the success of their efforts. For us, like for them, we do know what the future will bring: more of the same, especially of the enduring defects of human character.
Impossible to have too much fully integrated honesty.
Yeah, I know. So?
>>>>Odd 'laugh'. A negation of some of our liberties is amusing?
Not at all. I was laughing at you.
>>>>Two bits all I get in answer is another inane LOL.
Actually, you're not getting any answer, wisenheimer.
>>>>Who gave congress the power to "create" prohibitions on drugs?
The commerce clause of the US Constitution.
Is that you owk?
87.4% of statistics are made up.
Are you objecting to my statement because you think the 33% figure is arbitrary? No need to argue that--it is. But so what? There's some exact figure where a law which is opposed by X+0.1% of the citizenry is a bad law and one opposed by X-0.1% is a good law. The strength of opposition and the nature of the law in question would play such a significant role as to render the exact value of X meaningless.
I would suggest that very few good laws are going to be strongly opposed by even 10% of the population, and that if a law is strongly opposed by that many people, it's likely a bad law. Up the figure to 20% and it becomes even more likely. I'd say that by the time 33% of the people are strongly opposed to a law, it's almost certainly a bad one.
Among other things, if a law is enforced against the strong objection of 33% of the people, those 33% of the people are going to view the government as a tyrannical enemy. If the government passes more than one such law, that view of the government will be even more widespread. A government cannot pass very many such laws before it can only survive through tyranny.
No doubt.
And so far, there's been no response that I've seen to this "original issue". It's been shown that the founders did not intend the interstate commerce clause for the purpose of restricting the commercial activities of private citizens. If Congress wants to use it for that purpose, I suppose there's nothing immediately obvious about the clause that prevents it, but that doesn't mean the clause should then be interpreted in such a way as to enable Congress to do anything it deems necessary to make that restriction effective.
If Congress finds it's having a hard time using the clause for purposes for which it was never intended, that's Congress's problem. The meaning of the clause should not be stretched to accomodate that. Otherwise, the 10th amendment becomes a dead letter.
"Commerce" was the act of trade or exchange. The "actual goods" were refered to as "objects of commerce", a term given to discrete objects upon their entrance into the stream of commerce, held for as long as they remained there, and abandoned upon thier departure.
If you would not, then what's the point? Why should we be aware of original intent?
I would. We should be aware of original intent because there exist people who will take the successful misapplication of a single term, like "commerce" as license to take similar liberties with the surrounding terms like "regulate" and "among the several states" until the final product bears little resemblance to the original idea. The consequences of such manipulations combined with the existence of people who will engage in them make the advisability of referring to original intent whenever and whereever possible self evident.
IMHO.
Once again. "Writings outside the context of the Constitution, while historical in nature are nothing more then personal opinions and do not constitute any authority, nor are they binding in matters of governance and law. If these writings were significant, the Founders would have made them part of the Constitution itself."
Very often these writings are the historical record of that promulgation.
A government cannot pass very many such laws before it can only survive through tyranny.
I hadn't thought of it that way -- the whole post. It seems as a valuable perspective to integrate. Thanks.
As I have explained elsewhere, "original meaning" refers to the meaning a reasonable speaker of English would have attached to the words, phrases, sentences, etc. at the time the particular provision was adopted. It is originalist because it disregards any change to that meaning that may have occurred in the intervening years. It is objective insofar as it looks to the public meaning conveyed by the words used in the Constitution, rather than to the subjective intentions of its framers or ratifiers. By contrast, "original intent" refers to the goals, objectives, or purposes of those who wrote or ratified the text. These intentions could have been publicly known--or hidden behind a veil of secrecy. They could and indeed were likely to be in conflict.
- Randy E. Barnett, University of Chicago Law Review - Winter, 2001
An interesting point, considering that Barnett argued the Raisch case.
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